Mo Betta Mo Hawk

I forgot I took these pictures a couple weeks ago during bath time. I was having a little fun while washing her hair and snapped a couple pics of Zara's first up-do on her hair. Crazy hair is too long to get it to really stand up, we'll have to break out the egg whites for that some other time.

Daddy Day

For John's first Father's Day, we had tickets to the Astros and the three of us plus my cousin Grant headed to the ballpark. It was a good game, especially for Grant since the Rangers won. But it was also Zara's first baseball game. I think daughter and daddy had a good day. Zara has also started making her "d" sounds but I don't think we are quite ready to call it a word yet when she says "da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da". But I'm pretty sure I'm going to 'lose' in the first word battle.



I also spent Monday through Wednesday in Boulder doing some software testing for work. It was a short trip again but we had dinner one night at a pretty cool teahouse from Boulder's sister city in one of the "stans", Dushanbe.

California Dreaming

Monday I headed out to the other, larger Bay Area for a meeting at NASA-Ames. I'd previously never been in the area, so I was looking forward to it. We got in early enough Monday to head up to Napa Valley for a little sight seeing/tasting before the sun went away. My favorite stop was at V. Sattui where they have a deli and we also picked up some great cheese, salami, and bread and enjoyed a mini-feast on the picnic table. We also had dinner at Michael Chiarello's restaurant Bortega. I had oh so yummy braised beef short ribs with Meyer lemon spinach.

Tuesday all day was the meeting and we also got to tour the unitary wind tunnel where they were getting our model setup for testing. After formerly working in a wind tunnel in college it was neat to see the Ames tunnel, too bad I couldn't sneak into the 120x80 foot tunnel I've always wanted to see. In the evening, some of us headed into San Francisco for dinner, we made it to Fisherman's Wharf just in time for sunset. The rock below is actually The Rock, Alcatraz from the end of the pier. And that was it with a return to H-town the next morning. Didn't get to see much, but it was pretty what I did see.

Reverse Psycology

We must be close to crawling... because we started out just an inch out of reach.

EVOlution

John and I have finally joined the 21st century and are now proud owners of smartphones tapping away with our thumbs. Our contract was up so we could get whatever phone we wanted. With all our research we settled on the HTC Evo 4G. Ummm.... it's awesome. It's is blazing fast, especially on 4G, has a huge screen, and other bells and whistles like 8MP camera/camcorder, HD 720P HDMI output, and a whole lot of goodies. Having owned an iPod touch for awhile now, I also think the HTC sense Android interface is way better than the iPhone. The iPhone 4th generation (not actually 4g) is coming out soon and I'm sure a lot of people will like it. But really, the phones are if nothing else comparable but ours comes without the apple overlord at least.

Oh and minor correction, Zara wasn't teething so much as she was sick two weekends ago. how do we know? Because she gave it to us this last weekend. It's special, 8months old and already giving us presents.

All the Pain, No Gain

Zara is teething, well at least we think so, big time. She ran a fever (but was otherwise happy) for Fri/Sat nights and didn't sleep well either night, she has gone from her normal drool quantity to Drumheller Fountain, and has been refusing a lot of her solids. In general, all the symptoms of teething, but we have yet to see a pearly white crack the gum. It's really rather annoying as Zara's poor sleep means Mommy and Daddy aren't sleeping well. In fact we platooned on sleep Saturday night after Zara kept me up for 3 hours, I woke John up and told him it was his turn. I say bring on the teeth and let's end this madness.

Also, we have another baby addition to the family. Nolan joined the family on Thursday and is the proud son of my cousin Rachel and her husband Grant. We'll hopefully get over to Sugarland to meet the new fella in the next week or so when everyone has had time to settle in.

Anja Happy to See Me?

I have been totally remiss in getting this post up but I'm an Auntie!! Again, really since we already have a niece and two nephews on John's side, but this is the first Fahoum cousin for Zara. But I do have a great picture to include now.

My brother Yousef and sister-in-law Kari had little Anja Safa (pronounced aun-ya) last Wednesday. She had to join us in the world a month early and is a tiny little thing at 4lb 5oz and 17.25 in (I think those are correct), but she came out making noise and healthy which is all we asked for. It was an anxious day here in Houston as we were waiting for phone calls to update us on the arrival. Momma and baby are doing great and we most certainly can't wait to meet her at Christmas time when we go to visit! Welcome to the family Anja and keep on growing sweetie!

Clap for Credit

The title of this post is actually one of the nicknames for a class I took in college to fulfill my last two arts credits. The class involved going to a university concert once a week and clap when its over, the end. But Zara can now officially participate since John taught her to clap this morning. Apparently she wouldn't stop, that is until just before Mommy got home from work and I'm still waiting to see it.

In other news, we are making the switch to cloth diapers 100% of the time. We had been using disposables at school and g flushables at home. But I decided to try out cloth inserts for the g's at home and they've been great, so I've ordered more so we can do them 24/7 and launder 2-3 times per week. It really isn't very difficult to deal with and, especially since I am using a thin flushable paper liner to catch the poop, it is less work than wholly flusahable inserts. I also ordered organic bamboo and hemp cloth inserts made by work at home moms and they are great and are way better than the inserts available from the g diaper company. Zara is now one green baby as pictured below this morning on her 7 month birthday.

Sharing in Disaster

The Gulf oil spill is pretty awful, but what makes it even worse is stuff like this.

Deepwater Horizon Springs Another Leak - Harper's Bazaar

So in addition to bank profits being private, but losses public (thanks to BOTH dem and rep control- don't kid yourself. Not trying to get political here, just heading that off now.), oil industry profits are private and disaster/cleanup obligations will be public. I didn't really expect anything less.

Can You Hear Me Now?

This morning we had two appointments for Zara, the first a follow up for the tubes at the ENT and the second another set of shots at the pedi. Good news for Zara she can hear, which we knew all along because she responded and looked around at sounds. But now she can hear in that passed the test, gold star, teacher's pet kind of way.

As for the pedi, nothing wrong there but it is thankfully the last "monthly" visit in our shot schedule and we don't have to go for two months. I'm uber-glad for that because I like the pedi, but I spend so much time waiting because they are never on time. I really want to bill them for my time spent waiting. I'm a consultant, I have a going rate and I know how to use it darn it! :P But updated 7 month stats for the Z-ster. Drumroll please.... brrrrrrrrrr.... we are ABOVE the 10th percentile line in weight! All the solid foods kicked off another growth spurt and she is now 15lb 3 oz (15-20th%) and 26.75 in (~60th%).

Whereas we like the growth spurt, we totally don't like the teething. Zara is officially moved into her own room upstairs as of Friday, but just in time to get woken up several times a night with sore gums. Baby girl is not happy about these first teeth. Hopefully, they cut pretty soon and we can all sleep again.